The NCS 2056T Kit (6502 computer)

[quarkx]

Brace yourselves, this will be a bit long.
The kit is made by Gord Clink of APATCO Technologies. There is a forum for you there and Gord is always on hand to answer any questions and help in any way.
I got in my NCS 2056T Kit today. For those that do not know, the NCS kit is a complete 6502 Computer kit that is assembled from scratch,loosely based on Commodore Computers.
It comes with everything you need for a "Basic" computer, a 65C02 CPU@2 Mhz, 8K ROM, 32 K RAM, PS/2 keyboard interface and LCD screen.
At first, I was a bit leery of ordering this kit, At $180, it seemed a bit pricey for a kit. I was wrong. It comes with 3 manuals. Each is not just a photocopied sheet, but a nicely printed and bound manual. The technical manual if filled, not only with all the information on the6502, but a nice chunk of Commodore history (including the Amiga) and the history of MOS Tech up until 2004, and of course the Western Design Center. I will be posting a complete thread, but here are some (crappy) photos from my camera. It also comes with 3 EEproms for the ROM, 1blank, so you can burn your own, one already burned with a basic 37 line program, and 1for the LCD display.

The first thing you have to do is "assemble" the terminals on the breadboard for the power supply. This is straight forward, but there is step by step instructions. It also comes with 5 little rubber feet. At first the feet look like they snap on to the nuts on the bottom of the terminal, but they are too small. There is no mention of them in the manual, so I just space them on the bottom of the bread board. I just want to take a moment and say 2 things: first this breadboard is mounted on a good steel plate, therefore if you wanted to, you can mount this into a nice case after and use it as a regular machine.
Second, this kit is from Canada, so the power supply is 120W. I am sure it will be no problem to get a power adaptor for Europe, as all it is,is just a small wall wort with the end cut off and the wires striped.Gord has even soldered the tips, so no fraying will occur on the power cord.

Some gripes on the components (not Gord's fault) the silk-screening on the IC's is very faint. My old eyes need a good light and magnifying glass to see what they are. What happened to the good old days, when they used florescent paint and you could see at least the logo's a mile away, in the dark. (I remember AMD, you could see the logo so clearly,sometimes the logo looked bigger than the chip it was on).

[quarkx]

So, I started with the first project. I have power hooked up and the power LED light. I had a stumbling block, If you see the green blue wires, I had one set in the wrong holes (one over) and with it that way, no power. Went over everything again, and now she works. The next step is programing the EPROM with just wires (OMG!) on the board. This ought to be fun! (circled in second photo). At least there is no soldering in this kit.     

[quarkx]

Ok, so here is an update: I had to work over the last few days, so I had not got back to the kit until tonight, after working a few more hours coding the on-line store.
On Wednesday night, I had hooked up the power supply. Tonight, I hooked up all the wires to program the EEPROM. Yes, I KNOW I can just use an Eprom burnner, and the kit even came with another fully programed EEPROM, but if I am to learn this, I must program this EEProm by hand..In Binary, 1 address line at a time. It took the whole weekend of reading and re-reading the theory and instructions, to wrap my head around how this actually works. I suspect, that I was hung up on the fact that I really need an expensive Burner, hooked up to the PC to program this properly,once I figured out that I didn't need just one  wire to be hooked up to the Chip (I don't know why I thought that) andto understand the "High and Low" Grounded and Ungrounded, and how that translates to binary, that was the "hard" part. now on to actually program this thing.

[Hydrophilic]

Awesome thread you've started!  3 posts, with photos, in approximately 5 minutes might be a record 

I agree $180 seems a bit pricey and you're photos are quite blurry     (like mine are razor sharp or anything)

I'm glad you're mis-wiring of the power supply didn't blow anything up.  That happens to caps on occassion... at least when I'm involved...

Those do like nicely bound manuals and the layout of the chips on the board is pretty sweet too.  The nice thing is, from what I see in one of your photos, is the kit comes with a set of pre-cut wires?

Were the chips in-place on the bread board, or is that your work as well?

It doesn't surprise me the kit comes with ROM and RAM.  What I do find surprising is it comes with a ROM that has a BASIC program on it?

And the kit allows you to program EEPROMs too?

The webpage you linked to says the kit includes a CD with a macro assembler and simulator for PC, plus datasheets of all ICs.  That's pretty sweet too!  Have you had a chance to look at that and comment on any of it?  (I tried clicking the 'more info' link on the webpage but got an HTTP 404 error)

Anyway, have fun!

[quarkx]

Here is the details page.
I can not tell you, how much this kit is worth though, it has proven worth every single penny I spent.
Gord, is there for you every step of the way. If you go and read the support forums, he is right there always. Although, no one frequents the board these days, (at this time, I believe I am the only one right now building this kit), He always answers my e-mails(no mater how crazy they are) with in the hour, ussually with in a few minutes.
Second, all the wires are pre cut and color coded. (all the "blue" wires are the same length) they actually look like staples, because they are stiff and pre-bent to.
Third, the support CD is out of this world. Not only does it have all the manuals on PDF, it has all the data sheets, a 6502 emulator, and so, so much more (programs, documents etc)
The chips are shipped in place on the breadboard. I am not 100% sure if that is to insure no damage in shipping, or to make sure that everyone is starting the project with the chips in exactly the same place.

The SECOND lesson is to program the EEprom by hand "pulsing" each data line by hand. You are using a basic program not BASIC as in the language. When the first part of the kit is complete (The LCD and Keyboard are/were a second kit, that now is included for free), the program you flashed will cause the LEDs to count from 0 to 255 in binary in 33.16 seconds based on a delay loop of 253163 cycles.
Each line of the program has to be flashed in the EEprom, and you have to program it in binary. Every line, you rearrange all the wires, a long and tedious task, but it forces you to A) learn binary, and B) give you an understanding on how an EEprom is flashed. You CAN skip this step, as Gord has provided a fully programmed EEProm "just in case" you mess up.
Below are screen shots of the CD.

The nice thing about this kit, is its a start. with everything on 6502.org, once this is done, the sky is the limit. I plan on putting a com port and a real VGA monitor on this. I have seen schematics for IDE, Network, USB, and the list goes on 6502.org is insane.
once this is done, I plan to design my own 6502 system, do the wire wrap and PCB for it. Then on to a 68000 kit, then on to an ARM and design real hardware.

[quarkx]

Awesome thread you've started!  3 posts, with photos, in approximately 5 minutes might be a record 

I cheated there. I also have a thread on-going at amibay.com (and ultimately, my blog), I just copied and pasted the posts here. No magic.

[Hydrophilic]

Thanks for the details link.  It's nice the bread board comes with the chips in-place.  That sure to help noobs with reversing the direction, etc.  Pre-cut wires are always nice too.

And that CD looks jam packed with multiple megabytes of information.

Except for interfacing and programming the LCD, I don't see anything I would learn.  But what a great gift idea for those smart little guys and girls.  I remember building kits from RadioShack when I was a kid.  Some of them digital, some of them analog.  But none of them as cool as this!  I can't even imagine where I would be today if I started with something like this.

Thanks again for sharing and have fun!

[quarkx]

That's the whole point! If I had this in grade 12, instead of learning to program BASIC on PETS (which every year was the same since grade 6 except in grade 7 we had 1 Apple 2- which, suprise, we learned BASIC), I believe things would also have turned out differently. The school courses were stagnate back then 81-88. All they tought was introductory BASIC (never anything more). Good forbid if you actually programmed anything "Cool" or useful. I believe that is why so many people my age got "turned off" of computers back then, The courses were not fun to learn.
Now at 39, I am going back and trying to accomplish something more than just "Help Desk" and Virus removal guy in my life.

[airship]

It's things like this that make me kind of wish I was a 6502 virgin. *sigh*

BTW, I was surprised a little over a decade ago when I landed a job* based on my 6502 ML experience.  After the interview I apologized for not having any real answers for them. The interviewer said, "Don't worry about it - you're the first one who's understood the questions! You're hired!" 

*Working with CAN controllers on John Deere tractors.

[quarkx]

To be perfectly honest, I did look at 2 other kits before getting this one. 1 the Altair Kit and also by the same guy, the Altair 680. Both looked to be extremely expensive, and because the website has not been updated since 2007, I probably would not even get an e-mail back, and my soldering is not up to the value of these kits, yet.
I also looked at the Micro-Kim a clone of the KIM 1, but I wanted a breadboard computer first. Maybe I will get the Micro-kim next...

[airship]

The nice thing about the KIM is that the jump table is the same in ALL Commodore 8-bit computers, so if you know ML on one, the basics are the same on all the others. Excluding special chips like SID, the C128 MMU, etc., of course.

[quarkx]

Here is a quick update. I have been fighting a really bad Internet connection here so no pictures today kiddies. I DID NOT flash the EEPROM by hand. I leaned all the Theory behind it, but everyone, and I mean everyone even a Computer Science Teacher, said it would be a total waist of time. I had a lot of offers to burn it, and we are even getting a EEPROM burner "Kit" to build a complete burner by hand.
I have wired up the CPU to the EEPROM. In the original kit, the EEPROM was moved over to make room for the LCD screen, so the "Recommended" wires (orange and yellow), some of the orange would not reach, so I had to subsitute a few green ones (I will post pictures when I can).
Tonight I am working on the system clock.
More post later when I cna back up here.

[bacon]

The nice thing about the KIM is that the jump table is the same in ALL Commodore 8-bit computers, so if you know ML on one, the basics are the same on all the others. Excluding special chips like SID, the C128 MMU, etc., of course.

The KERNAL jump table didn't appear until the PET. I have a Micro-KIM and it only has the small 2K monitor program (TIM I think) in ROM, which allows for hex view of memory (one byte at a time), input from the hex keyboard or a terminal, and loading and saving to tape. No jump table as far as the eye can see.

The Micro-KIM is a very nice, compact computer however, and very easy to build if you have moderate soldering skills.

[airship]

My bad. I was under the impression that Mr. Peddle's little trainer had a Kernal that was similar in most basic ways to the later computers.

I didn't start with CBMs myself - instead of a KIM I had an ELF II, and instead of a PET I had an Ohio Scientific C1P.

[BloodyCactus]

that looks pretty cool, its nice to see a kit for those of us without soldering skills